Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning the Miller family left Matagalpa to drive back out the way that we came into town two nights ago but this time in the morning sun so that we were able to really get a view of the area.  We would have never guessed what gorgeous farmland was out there from our night time drive.

The drive down to Sebaco from Matagalpa was very nice, coming down from the high mountains.  Sebaco is a beautiful town, which I had guessed from the drive through it two nights ago.  It looked pretty nice even in the dark.  One of the first places where we’ve seen super broad streets with protected biking areas on either side.

We fueled up in Sebaco and turned to the west to take route 1 to route 26.  This area is a high plateau, wide and flat between the mountain ranges.  A totally gorgeous area, just the most amazing farmland.

We drove for a few hours, the going is very slow on these roads.  But it was a wonderful day and we all enjoyed the drive.

As we got closer to the west we got to see more and more volcanoes around us.  There was one, at first, far off in the distance.  But eventually we saw about seven of them.  Two we were extremely close to.  One was clearly smoking quite a lot very close to us.  We stopped a few times to take pictures.  It was all amazing.

We got to Leon around noon.  We had made no reservations but had looked ahead to see where we would likely want to stay and knew that the Hotel Azul looked to be very much our style.  Not cheap but not bad, something on the fancier side and a bit of a change of pace.

Getting into Leon starts off as the most gorgeous approach through tree lined avenues but once you are into the city it is very run down and dirty.  It has a certain charm, but only so much of one.  Mostly it just seems to be unkempt.

It did not take too much work to find the hotel.  We parked on the Avenida Central and I ran in and booked the family suite.  It was a staggering $100 a night, a small fortune in Nicaraguan terms, but it seemed really nice and we did not know where else would make sense in town.  But we could not get into the room for a few hours.  So we decided to leave town and drive to the coast until it was ready.

This proved to be more challenging that it should have been because Google maps, again, steered us completely wrong and took us out of town on a road that, while it went it the right direction (after Google took us the wrong way down a one way) ended in a culvert a few score meters shy of the intersection that we needed so while a 4×4 or someone hiking could get through, a normal car could not.

We ended up driving through some weeds and along a dirt trail and made it to the road that we needed and continued on to the coast.  The drive out of Leon was interesting as it was lined with amazing mansions in what must have been the equivalent of a Leonese suburb.

The drive through the county to the coast was nice.  At the coast we got to the beach at Penoloya.  Nothing special there.  We found a place to drive to the beach itself, parked in a lot by a bar, sat down and got drinks while the girls played in the sand.  The water was too rough to let them go down to the water.  We walked down but could not go in.  Nearly all of Central America has dangerous surf on the Pacific side so you really need to be cautious.

By the time that we returned to Leon our room at the Hotel Azul was ready.  We got into the room which had three beds and was in the back corner past the pool  The public area is lovely with a pool right in the middle like our house, all lit in blue (or course) with a cool swinging lounge chair that the girls were very excited about.

Dominica and the girls were tired, so they relaxed for a bit and I took a long walk around the city and took some pictures and got the lay of the land.  Leon is famous for its old churches but has little else to offer.  It is not an “activity” city. It has some restaurants, bars, and other normal things but little to draw in a visitor.  This is Nicaragua’s second largest city.

Once I returned I showered, dressed and we went out to find dinner.  We discussed this for quite a while and could not figure out what anyone wanted.  Leon is a bit famous for the restaurants downtown being overpriced and of low quality.  So very little that was very enticing.

Dominica did manage to find the sister ice cream shop to the one in Matagalpa that we had sought yesterday evening and so we started our dinner by going there and getting that out of the way before anything went wrong and we did not manage to do it.

The ice cream from Kiss Me was very good.  They had a neat selection of flavours.  Dominica and I were adventurous; the girls got vanilla.  That’s how we roll.

We attempted to have dinner at a Polish – Sri Lankan restaurant that was well reviewed but after finding it, it turned out to be closed.  So we just went to the local Chinese place which was perfectly good and we enjoyed our food.  It was not too expensive and, in reality, I am sure that the girls enjoyed their food far more from there.

After dinner we just returned to the hotel and were off to sleep.

We are in Matagalpa this morning at the Matagalpa Inn on the south side of town next to the Tip Top (major Nicaraguan fast food chain) and across the street from Pollo Estralla (literally Chicken Star.)  I got up before the kids so headed out to walk around town and get a feel for the area.

I took the highway north and then the first bridge to downtown.  The walk along the highway was nice as there was a good sidewalk there.  Mostly the walk when by many pulperias and fix it shops for different car components.

I did find two universities on the walk.  Universities down here are so wildly different than in the US.

Turning downtown was a major change.  Once you leave the highway the center of Matagalpa is very nice.  A broad tree lined boulevard leading to downtown with a full city block dedicated for a very nice playground.

I walked around downtown a bit getting to see the cathedral, central park and getting a good feel for what the city is like.  Then I returned to the hotel so that we could do breakfast as a family.

We had a nice breakfast in the hotel and then decided, based on my reconnaissance, that there was little of interest for the kids and not very much to see so that it would likely make more sense to do some driving first thing today and go see Jinotega right away especially as that is the city that we are more interested in.

So we got in the car after breakfast and drove north out of town through Molina Norte and up the mountains.  The drive from Matagalpa up to Jinotega is a very quiet, mountainous road that is pretty slow going.  The distance is short but the time is long.  The whole drive was stunning, though.  It was the best thing that we have seen in Nicaragua yet.

There was surprisingly almost zero traffic the entire way.  This seemed odd as these are two large cities right next to each other and this is the only highway that connects to Jinotega.  Everything that Jinotega gets or ships has to come in and out on this road.

We drove around the city on the highway first to get an overview then looped back and came through on the central avenue.  Once past the central park, which every city here has, I pulled over and parked and we walked back to the park.

At the park we found a very large playground that the girls were very excited about.  This was much safer than the one in Granada near our house, although we still had to be quite cautious as the large slide, for example, has dangerously ripped metal on it!  We probably spent an hour on the playground and the girls made some new friends too.  It was a very nice time.

The weather in Jinotega is what it is all about.  It is always cool up here and often misty.  Instead of the high eighties and low nineties it is the low seventies and at night it can even get down to sixty!  A very different bit of Nicaragua!

We did a little walking around after the park and stopped at an Eskimo ice cream shop for treats before getting back in the car and driving back to Matagalpa.  That was a fun break.

In a city like this, especially with the girls, there is very little for us to “do” when we are out and about.  It is not like European cities loaded with museums and parks around every corner.  There is generally a central park, a few churches to see and just residential calles.  That’s it.  So other than getting a quick overview of town and hitting the playground we really had nothing to do.

So back in the car and we returned to Matagalpa and our hotel.  The drive was awesome again.  Just such an awesome area.

In Molina Norte, just outside of Matagalpa, there is a new housing development going up with mortgages starting at just $240 USD per month.  I have no idea why they put prices in American dollars when this is an area where Americans and tourists never go.

We got back to the hotel and did some searching for what we might want to do for dinner.  Dominica decided that she really wanted to try this highly rated ice cream place and then get dinner somewhere nearby.  It was an area of the city that I did not know and would have been a very long walk had we gone by a major road.  Google showed a foot path taking me into the city so I volunteered to go for a walk and see how the area looked.

I walked north and then Google sent me down to a little dark walkway in the mud.  It quickly went along the river bank in a really bad shanty town area by the back fence of the university.  This was certainly not a place that I should be walking and definitely not at twilight. It is a really good thing that I came alone, this would not be a place to bring the kids.  I only came down here because Dominica insisted that Google showed a bridge.

Not only was the area far too dangerous to be shown as a place to go, but there was no bridge there whatsoever.  This was just a dangerous dead end.  Thanks, Google.  The area was bad enough that a guy there laughed at me (in a friendly way) and talked about how I had ended up in the wrong place for sure.  So I walked back out.

I ended up doing a ton of searching for a bridge that I had seen from the river bank that was not on any map that we had, Apple or Google.  I eventually just followed someone who looked like they might be going in the right direction for me.

I ended up going down an unlit concrete set of stairs without a railing by an old building that descended down to a different layer of town and dropped me in a dark, dirty ally from which I stepped out into a poor area of the city and walked a few blocks till I found the river and turned left to go north towards the bridge that I could now see.

The bridge was an old metal footbridge going over the Rio Grande.  There were a ton of people going over it.  It seemed so strange as it seemed to be in the most out of the way place but it seemed to be a major thoroughfare for everyone walking across the city.

I walked through the city to the southern park and discovered that there was a huge street fair going on tonight.  The streets were just full of people heading to the fair.  The park that I was heading to was so packed that I was barely able to get through it.

I was not able to find several of the places that Dominica had sent me out to find.  Some were blocked by the fair and some I just could not find.  They were setting off fireworks in the park too which was so loud that my jaw actually hurt from how loud it was.

I finally made it back to the hotel long after it was dark – which meant that I had done all of that walking through the city, over the bridge and up that odd stairway by the building in the darkness.  All very odd.

Once back to the hotel Dominica decided that she wanted nothing to do with walking out there.  So instead we drove downtown to a Mexican place that was well rated.  Dinner was okay there but nothing special.  It did not warrant the good rating that it had, that’s for sure.

Back to the hotel and to bed.  We are going to move on tomorrow to Leon.

I got up this morning nice and early and did my usual morning routine of posting and writing.  I get much of my best work done on the rather early side.

We talked this morning about what we might want to do this weekend and decided to look into renting a car, possibly, to go travel this weekend.

Around one I walked down to the Hotel Plaza Colon where we have discovered that the Dollar Rent a Car is hiding.  There is no signage, you just have to know that it is inside.

You have to go into the Hotel Plaza Colon and ask at the front desk and they point you to the Dollar desk which is hidden in a back room and is not visible even if you walk around the hotel a bit.  It is a handy location for people staying on the plaza but impossible to find if you do not know already where it is.

I asked about a car and they provided one to me instantly.  And, of course, it is another awful Toyota Yaris.  At least it is white so not so hot.

The rental was just $38 per day after the insurance and tax and everything.  So I drove it back to the house and surprised Dominica with a car.

I did some more writing for a while while Dominica worked on getting us packed and ready to go.

We did not manage to leave the house in Granada until nearly five.  So it was getting dark by the time that we were on the road.

Our goal tonight, which we did not decide until pretty much the last minute, was to head up into the mountains to Matagalpa.  We really want to see what it is like up there and get a break from the heat too. The mountains are where we are most interested in potentially spending more time long term and really want to see what it is like up there.

We had to start by driving up through Masaya and up to Tipitapa which is the same route that we took to get from the airport to our house in Granada when we first arrived in Nicaragua.  Once through town, though, we were off in the darkness to new parts of the country which we had never seen before.  Unfortunately it was dark so early that we really saw nothing whatsoever of Nicaragua on this drive.  So we did not really learn much about the region other than what little bit we could see in the headlights and quite about about what driving is like.

Driving in Central America is always a challenging experience but not really all that bad.  There are tons of people and animals and non-road worthy vehicles present at all times but unlike Panama there is not a continuous stream of people running across the highway.  A step in the right direction.

The drive was interesting and it was clear that we drove up into the mountains and across a high plateau before heading up even farther.

The hotel that we found was the Hotel Matagalpa Inn for just like $50 per night for two big beds right in town.  The hotel was located right as you enter town and right on the highway so that it was incredibly easy to find.  We drove right to it needing no directions or map.

We got into the hotel without any problem.  We might be the only people staying here tonight.  The room was nice and lots of room.

No one felt like going out tonight so we ended up just staying in since it was late and dark.  We tried getting pizza but nearly everything was closed.  The front desk called around and found us a place that had closed but was willing to open back up just to sell us a pizza!

We ordered a pizza but it was going to take nearly an hour since the ovens were off and they had to fire everything back up again.  So while we were waiting for that I went out to explore where we were.  I went across the street to Pollo Estrella (Chicken Star) and got some fries for everyone.

Pollo Estrella is a smaller Nica chain, much like Tip Top.  They setup is very strange and worth a trip to experience.  A huge outdoor area and waitresses but fast food fried chicken and fries.  The fries were good.

I went over to the Uno gas station on the corner and picked up some snacks and drinks and returned to the hotel.  We just hung out in the room and waiting for the pizza.

The pizza ended up being amazing.  We really loved it, especially the mushroom and veggies pizza that Dominica and I got.  Delicious!

We were off to bed early so that we can explore the mountains tomorrow.

I did not get great sleep last night as Liesl kept me up much of the night playing video games in our bedroom.  She did a great job on Broken Age, though, and is really far through it completely on her own.  Her being able to play adult video games when we are asleep is very impressive.

We got loads more fruit today.  Liesl tried drinking her first coconut today.  She had a little but was not really that into it so I ended up drinking most of it. But she tried it which is great.

Liesl lost another tooth this morning.  She is losing them very quickly, I feel.

Today was extra hot.  Very, very hot.  We were melting all day.  No cloud cover at all.  The bright days are the worst.  When it is overcast it is wonderful here in Granada, but those overcast days seem to be few and far between.

Today is “Back to the Future Day”, the date on which Marty and Doc traveled to in the future of Back to the Future Part II.

I got some writing done today and submitted two more articles for publication which actually fills up my backlog through the end of the year.

This evening I went out and got some pastries for the family on my own around seven.  I got home and everyone really liked them and since I had taken pictures of the pasteleria they wanted me to go out and get more stuff.  So Liesl came out with me, around eight thirty, for a walk to get more.  But we found that they were closed.  So much for getting more pastries.

Since it is “Back to the Future Day” we were having family game night and playing Back to the Future: The Game Episode Three.  We could not get the controller to connect because the batteries were dead.  So Liesl volunteered to go walking with me to the corner store to get batteries.

Liesl and I had a very nice walk together, just the two of us.  We stopped by Licoria Mary on the way back and picked up some beer too.

Back home we played Back to the Future: The Game for a bit.  Then the girls wanted to play Broken Age.  Liesl ended up playing her game late into the night, long after Dominica and I had gone to sleep.  That means that Liesl is able to play that game without any problems even without us helping her in any way.  We did not watch any of the game with her!  She did it 100% on her own.